Friday, 31 August 2012

We Need Immigrants To Fill Vacancies Left By Retiring Baby-Boomers.

More than half of Canadians now in their 50s plan to keep on working after retiring in their 60s, in many cases to supplement their income, according to a new survey.

The national online survey, conducted last month for CIBC by Leger Marketing, found that Quebec residents were least likely to say they'll work after retirement, at 47 per cent.

Manitoba and Saskatchewan residents were the most likely to say they planned to work after retirement, at 59 per cent.

Atlantic Canada (54 per cent), Ontario (55 per cent), Alberta (57 per cent) and British Columbia (49 per cent) were closer to the national average of 53 per cent.

Just flush another assumption down the drain.

This cuts to the heart of the problem of making policies based on projections of events that haven't happened yet. Anything can happen between now and then to nullify them and this is an example.

This is why so-called "experts" tend to be wrong most of the time. They are trying to predict the future based on available data. But if Environment Canada cannot accurately predict the weather forecast 48hrs. into the future using the most advanced supercomputers then why should we believe some putz in an office with some degrees hanging on his wall on what they say will happen ten years from now?

The mass of retiring baby-boomers was one selling point of the lie for mass immigration. Now it's so far proving to be an invalid one.

The gradual exiting of the workforce of the baby-boom generation can cause generational strife as younger workers find themselves unable to advance in their careers as the boomers continue to occupy positions that would have allowed the advancement of their younger co-workers if the boomer retired. That is if younger workers are lucky enough to land a decent job with growth prospects in the first place.

Continuing to dump masses of unwanted immigrants into this economic situation can only exacerbate it further by adding an immigrant contender in this younger-worker vs. older worker boxing match.

We can't do anything about the immigrants we foolishly allowed in already. But we can do something about the one who haven't arrived here yet.

4 comments:

Alain
said...

No, we do not need even more immigrants to fill vacancies left by retiring baby-boomers. To claim otherwise is to assume that for every retiring baby-boomer, there is a matching immigrant with all the required skills and abilities including language. Also I suggest that a fairly large number of these baby-boomers work in the public service/government, be it city, provincial or federal, and there is dire need to cut back these bloated bureaucracies.

Considering that we already have a very large number of immigrants who have not, or refuse to, integrate into Canadian society, we need to focus on resolving this before allowing an unending influx of more of the same.

Also I suggest that a fairly large number of these baby-boomers work in the public service/government, be it city, provincial or federal, and there is dire need to cut back these bloated bureaucracies.

Good point.

Also since these jobs are in the public sector the pressure to satisfy "diversity for diversity's sake" social re-engineering policies means white males are s**t out of luck if they want to apply for one.

As usual, yesterday the Star published another supportive article saying "Ontario needs" 135,000 immigrants per year.

The story as usual is in the reader comments. One of the top rated commenters was an immigrant who observed that in another part of the article, it was noted that "...Ontario’s unemployment rate for immigrants last year was the second-worst in the country at 15.7 per cent — double the province’s overall unemployment rate of 7.6 per cent."

This commenter rightly pointed out that how would adding more immigrants to this mix solve unemployment.

Another commenter pointed out that what we have is not a skilled labour shortage, but a shortage of people willing to work for a lot less. Someone else mentioned that 70 IT positions were eliminated in their workplace, replacing those making $70K/year by immigrants willing to work for $35K.

You can't blame the immigrants, particularly those with skills to offer, for coming to this great country. I blame the government for inviting them and not being clear to the Canadian public that the real reason is for votes, cheap labour, keeping housing afloat.

Another part of the article indicated that jobs in manufacturing had declined 35%. With technology we can do more with fewer people. The panic for employers is not that there won't be people, it is that they want people to work for less, and people desperate enough for work that they'll put up with anything. Yet Canadians fought for generations to improve workplace compensation and standards.

Fine, the Star can have their wish, but what kind of quality of life will all sorts of immigrants, and the Canadians, who now will be forced to take lower wages to compete with immigrants -- what kind of life will this be? You can't buy a home on minimum wage.

When this immigrant arrives and can't find work, he adds to the long number of people on waiting lists for subsidized housing, needs welfare, medical care, etc. Funny that the Star in other reports focuses on all the shortages in the city of Toronto to help those struggling, yet advocates bringing in more to struggle.

The comments were overwhelmingly against the idea of adding more immigrants to Ontario. The few that supported the idea brought out the tired arguments that who will do the lowly service jobs, clean washrooms, work at fast food. First of all, do you really think the skilled immigrants the government claims it is hoping to attract want to clean toilets? Secondly, with fewer people, and by keeping Canada's population stable rather than growing it through immigration, we won't need so many fast food outlets. Lastly, those employers at minimum wage (or under the table) will be pressured to maybe pay a decent wage ($12-$15/hr) if they don't have a continual supply of desperate workers.

As usual, yesterday the Star published another supportive article saying "Ontario needs" 135,000 immigrants per year.

I read that editorial today. Reading between the lines you'd see that the Star is arguing for the importation of 135,000 potential Toronto Star readers and eyeballs for it's advertisers.

It's interesting how the Star will focus on the opinions of those who argue for more immigration yet ignores the opinions of those who argue for less.

And as the comments usually point out the people aren't buying the "we need more immigrants" line anymore seeing it for the lie that it is. And not surprisingly it's usually recent immigrants who are the quickest to say we don't need more immigrants but they only say that once they are in the country.